The Case of a Nursing Assistant Who Suffered Paralysis Following Vaccination Recognized as an Industrial Accident: The First Case in South Korea

[경향신문]

Courtesy of Yonhap News

A, a nursing assistant who suffered from quadriplegia (paralysis of all four limbs) after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, was recognized as a victim of an industrial accident. This is the first case in which a side effect of the vaccine was recognized as an occupational accident.

On August 6, the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service announced, “After a review by the Occupational Disease Award Commission, we recognized A’s case as an industrial accident.”

A, a nursing assistant who worked in a hospital in Gyeonggi-do, suffered from quadriplegia and binocular diplopia (double vision) and was diagnosed with acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), related to an immune reaction, after she received the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 12. Her case was made known to the public when her husband posted a petition on the Cheongwadae petition website in April. On April 23, A’s family applied for recognition as an industrial accident, and the case was acknowledged after more than three months.

The Occupational Disease Award Commission, comprised of seven members including experts in infectious diseases, occupational and environmental medicine, and law, held a meeting on August 4 and engaged in a final discussion on recognizing A’s case as an occupational accident. Upon review, the commission concluded that A was vaccinated in connection to her job, since as a nursing assistant, she was among the first recipients and received the vaccine according to the active guidance of her workplace; the time that she received the vaccine was recognized as working hours; and it would have been difficult for her to conduct her tasks if she did not receive the vaccine. The fact that A did not have any underlying disease or genetic illness that could trigger an allergic reaction to the vaccine and that the chronological relationship between vaccination and the allergic reaction was recognized also influenced the commission’s decision.

Earlier in May, a team investigating problems triggered by COVID-19 vaccines concluded that it was difficult to recognize the causal relation between the vaccine and A’s quadriplegia. However, the team also acknowledged that the information they had was insufficient to determine causal relations. So A was included in the list of people eligible for government support for medical costs, given to patients who suffer from serious symptoms but who do not have sufficient data to determine causal relations.

The Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service said, “The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency deemed that there was no precedent of the aforementioned disease as an allergic reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine and that the information was insufficient, but it was not enough to deny the causal relations in recognizing the case as an industrial accident,” and added, “After comprehensively considering all these factors, we decided to recognize this case as an occupational accident.”

A was the first to be recognized as a victim of an industrial accident for vaccine side effects. Currently, there are more nurses and nursing assistants other than A who have applied to have their allergic reactions to the vaccine recognized as an industrial accident. The final decision on compensation will be made on all these cases after a review by the Occupational Disease Award Commission as in the case of A.